2015.05.08 10:40 Architecture Critic Mark Lamster: "We systemically encourage bad building."
The real problem is that new development isn't junky enough.
"Junky is so uniquely 21st century. I love all of it!"

2015.05.08 12:20 Architecture Critic Mark Lamster: "We systemically encourage bad building."
"Oh yes, 'Junky Architecture' is indeed uniquely 21st century, but aren't you also glad to see how 22nd century architecture is now even "Junkier"? I mean, I'm like ecstatic over it!"
And if "silly memes" killed the "Folk Art demo opposition," then the "Folk Art demo opposition" must have been a featherweight and the "silly memes" a heavyweight.

2015.05.09 16:49 Interview : March 22, 2014
...also coincidently this morning, was reading "Deleuze's transcendental empiricism" in Continental Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction, and towards the end of the chapter "eternal return" comes up. Turns out the passages revolve around quotations from Deleuze's Difference and Repetition:
"Eternal return, in its esoteric truth, concerns--and can concern--only the third time of the series. Only there it is determined. That is why it is properly called a belief of the future, a belief in the future." (DR 90)
"The present is the repeater, the past is repetition itself, but the future is that which is repeated." (DR 94)
So just now I looked more into the 90-94 pages of Difference and Repetition, and I'm going to continue reading there. I've owned DR for 18 years now, but I never read much of it. Now I see some potential fruitfulness as to it relating to the notion of "Eternal Wrest will have to do with reenacting with a twist as a constant generator of originality."
Wrest is itself a fruitful word: 1 a : to pull, force, or move by violent wringing or twisting movements 2 : to gain with difficulty by or as if by coercive force, or steady determined labor 3 a : to divert to an unintended, unnatural, or esp. improper use b : to misinterpret or misapply (a law) intentionally c : to deflect or change from a true or normal bearing, significance or interpretation

2015.05.10 09:33 Robert Venturi, Prince Charles & that false Corinthian column
Not sure about the "free play" part. Venturi's (personal) design method involves a much more studied play "of signs and signifiers." Perhaps what most don't realize, however, is just how facile Venturi is/was with studied play. His draftsmanship was always simultaneously designmanship.

2015.05.15 13:38 Bjarke Ingels wants to "make the world of the future more like our dreams”
Is it wrong to assume that the drawings, images, diagrams and models that represent a BIG project are primarily used to explain the project to the client? And if that is indeed the case, then notions of sincerity, marketing, post-rationalization and academic hype aren't actually the issue.

2015.05.15 14:00 Bjarke Ingels wants to "make the world of the future more like our dreams”
Where is the evidence that the diagram became the goal? And, moreover, the notion of the diagram being the goal just doesn't make any sense to me, because, when I look at the 'communication' that BIG offers, the goal is obviously architecture.

2015.05.15 17:35 Bjarke Ingels wants to "make the world of the future more like our dreams”
Actually, I do admire BIG's process, but not because it is somehow superior. I admire it because it's an atypical abstraction of the typical architectural design process.

2015.05.23 12:32 Construction of Steven Holl-designed Queens Library is underway
I wouldn't put Holl's designs so much ahead of all other present architectural design. Looking at the body of work from the 21st century so far, the designs are very much within the overall milieu of 21st century design, sometimes original tangents, sometimes somewhat reactive, yet always carefully considerate of the Zeitgeist in general.

2015.05.23 14:08 Police Shut Down Mosque Installation at Venice Biennale
Perhaps some artist at the next Istanbul Biennale will do an art installation in the form of a functioning Greek Orthodox Church inside Hagia Sophia.

2015.05.23 15:17 Police Shut Down Mosque Installation at Venice Biennale
"I heard the Vatican is thinking about buying all the Dubai island reenactments and then build churches on them. It's the only way that they can think of to make the Middle East more Catholic again."
--the über-famous performance artist Rita Novel, 2005.08.06

2015.05.24 08:52 New photos of E. Fay Jones' Thorncrown Chapel unveiled to mark 35th anniversary
Not sure where the thought came from, but upon waking up this morning I found myself thinking "precursor of Calatrava."

2015.05.24 09:06 Police Shut Down Mosque Installation at Venice Biennale
"...Venice, which for centuries served as a crossroads between East and West and is infused with Middle Eastern architectural influences," yes, architectural influences of the Christian Middle East, ie, the Byzantine Empire. And who and what pretty much eradicated the Byzantine Empire?
Are there any other countries, besides Saudi Arabia, where it is illegal to build a Roman Catholic Church?

2015.05.24 11:34 Stop the presses: Paul Goldberger's take on critical relevance in the social media age
Regarding "Paul Goldberger's support of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown" keep in mind Goldberger's linear decent from Scully and Stern. Stern's New Directions in American Architecture (1969) may indeed be the starting gate from which Goldberger's critique sprung out of.

2015.05.24 13:33 Stop the presses: Paul Goldberger's take on critical relevance in the social media age
The "lineage" goes back even more. Among the critics on Venturi's 1950 Princeton thesis are George Howe and Louis Kahn. George Howe was Chair of the Architectural Department at Yale from 1950 to 1954. That's when Louis Kahn (a sometimes partner with Howe during the 1940s) also taught at Yale. Scully writes Louis I. Kahn (1962) wherein he twice cites student Robert Stern whose thesis is on George Howe. Spring 1963 Venturi is a visiting critic at Yale, overseeing a master's class studio on precast concrete, which he teaches with the chair of the department, Paul Rudolph.
(Rounding out the "Philadelphia School" theme) Goldberger wrote a nice piece on "Works of Mitchell/Giurgola" in a+u 75:12.
One of these days I'll computer model the Brant House Addition, a Venturi addition to a Venturi house. Not too dissimilar to Mom goes eclectic.
And regarding Paul Goldberger's take on critical relevance in the social media age, I'm thinking somewhere between "In the future everything (critical) will be an advertisement" and "In the future everything (critical) will be self-published." Yikes, does that mean in the present/future everything critical will be a self-published advertisement?!

2015.05.25 10:32 Stop the presses: Paul Goldberger's take on critical relevance in the social media age
The Brant House Addition (1978) and the House inspired by Mount Vernon (1978-79, also designed for the Brant's) were designed when the firm was still Venturi and Rauch (Venturi, Rauch & Scott Brown 1980-88, Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates 1988-2012--Venturi and Scott Brown officially announce their retirement on their wedding anniversary).
[John C. Knowles and Allen Greenberg were the studio critics of my 1st semester 5th year design studio Fall 1980, and Greenberg was among the critics at my thesis jury Spring 1981. Greenberg rarely liked anything I was doing design-wise, yet I still received the AIA Award for Distinguished Design upon graduation.]
Summer 1981 I worked for HABS at Gunston Hall, Virginia. Turned out that Greenberg had been there some months earlier cribbing details from the Palladian Room, as Mount Vernon, south of Gunston Hall also on the Potomac, lacked such fine detail.

2015.05.26 08:47 New photos of E. Fay Jones' Thorncrown Chapel unveiled to mark 35th anniversary
Is there any actual evidence that "imitating Frank Lloyd Wright is invariably not productive at all?" I understand the implication of such a supposition, i.e., to be productive you must progress, but is there really any evidence that imitating FLW leads directly to non-progress?

2015.05.26 09:46 New photos of E. Fay Jones' Thorncrown Chapel unveiled to mark 35th anniversary
...you put forth a whole range of issues that are loose, if not also mostly unresolved.
"If you believe...", so it depends on a system of (personal) belief?
"most definitely", really? there should then be definite proof.
Not "an evidence question so much as a philosophical question, a question about aesthetics. As I see it...", so it does depend on a system of personal belief.
So copy and imitate are the same thing?
Why exactly are the works of the Taliesin Associated Architects not worth the time of day? How has that been proven to be true. Have you given them any time at all?
"...there is a considerable difference between copying Wright and Wright's influence" Is this the same considerable difference between imitating Wright and Wright's influence? Again, copying and imitating are the same thing?
So imitating the generic is just fine, but imitating the idiosyncratic is not just fine?
In today's world where in some instances it is possible for a copy to be exactly the same as the original, the whole notion of copy needs new "philosophical" definitions. The whole notion of cloning, is a real indication of exactly that.
Imitation, on the other hand, has always been a process that involves individual creativity in both assimilation and execution. To an imitator, the original and influence are virtually the same thing. Imitators get very creative with the original/influence.

2015.05.26 12:35 New photos of E. Fay Jones' Thorncrown Chapel unveiled to mark 35th anniversary
...the Massaro House isn't even a copy, it's an attempt to produce an original.
...the present Barcelona Pavilion is an exact copy of the original Barcelona Pavilion. If the present Barcelona Pavilion were exact to your specifications above, i.e., the exact same materials as the original, then it wouldn't be a copy, it would be the original. The galleries of the present Barnes Foundation are an exact copy of the original galleries of the Barnes Foundation.
I'm more concerned over recognition of the distinction between copy and imitation. And I'm concerned over DWL's use of definitive language were really there are no definitives.
Here's an example of architectural design via (digital data) copying:
There is no imitation involved at all.